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Valentines day 2013 was an all around bizarre day. That was the day that Oscar Pistorius allegedly murdered his girlfriend, that day the an SWAT team came to Angel Hall, the day that people were going a bit crazy lamenting over how much the day sucked.So this episode of This American Life was fittingly titled Valentines Day 2013, even though the stories that were told did not occur on that day. Each segment told a piece of the craziness and weirdness people will put up with for “love”.

When I was listening to the program I didn’t really know what to do with myself- where was I supposed to direct my face, what was I supposed to do with my hands, could I be doing other things while trying to listen? I tried to be on my computer, but I found myself easily distracted by everything online especially during the duck story, which did not hold my attention at all.Then I tried just laying down and listening, but I found myself drifting off to sleep. Whenever I had listened to the radio in the past, I was driving, my attention was to the road and my hands were on the steering wheel.

I really enjoyed the first segment and the last one. The first one segment about the physicists calculating the potential number of women available to them reminded my of a scene from A Beautiful Mind, where Russel Crowe’s character uses game theory to ensure that he and the rest of friends wind up with dates.

Mike Birbiglia’s final segment about his girlfriends boyfriend was great. It was both funny and serious with the ending moral of the story, “sometimes when you want to be in a place so badly, you’d do anything”. Sleepwalk With Me has been in my Netflix instant queue for months, I hope to get around to it soon.

The Michigan Radio is very representative of what the radio station is about. Its too flashy, and just serious enough to attract its NPR listening audience. I thought their way of color coding the :most Active Stories” was interesting and reminds me of the national security color scale. The chart does not say why the story is “active”: active in what? In click rates, Facebook likes/comments, Twitter click throughs?

From michiganradio.org

I looked at both their Facebook page and Twitter feed, and found that they have more followers on Twitter than likes on Facebook by about 2,000. However, I thought that the Facebook page was more interactive with audience members. I followed their recent hashtag “earlyed” about a childhood education. The feed was really successful and engaging; it is still continuing after the broadcast.

I don’t usually listen to NPR, but when I was looking at the website I clicked on the “Listen Live” feature to help get a sense of what would be to be playing at the time. It is show called “Ask Me Another” which I immediately fell in love with. It was a whole show about trivia, puzzles and knowing more than other people–which I love.

I read through a couple of articles on the site each day, but here are the ones I really liked: